Gen Con

Hello everyone, Darryl here with this week’s gaming news! New Dungeons & Dragons licensed products from the Toy Fair, International Tabletop Day announcements, Steve Jackson Games Stakeholders Report for 2017 and announcements for 2018, and more!

In a press release sent out today, Gen Con announced that they expect attendee badges for the 2018 show to sell out. If you are looking to get to the convention this summer, be sure to grab your badges soon!

Hello everyone, Darryl here with this week’s gaming news! An early preview season for M:TG due to a theft, a new Shadowrun video game may be on the horizon, BattleTech gets a YA fiction series, an updated Empyrea announcement, and more!

Hello everyone, Darryl here with help me help me we went from no news to too much news and I don’t know what to do! Gen Con, Diana Jones, ENnies, highly anticipated products released, all new products and licenses announced, it’s just too much!

While at Gen Con, I had the opportunity to briefly meet with James Sutter, the Creative Director for the new Starfinder game from Paizo Publishing, as well as the co-creator of the Pathfinder role-playing game. We met in the first hour of the con, before Starfinder sold out, when the press of bodies at the convention was trying to get to the Paizo booth and grab their copies of the game. Moving along the line of people waiting to pay for their copies was Sutter, moving along the line with a pen in hand to sign the copies of anyone who wanted a signature. He talked with everyone, and laughed with many.

While flying home from Gen Con on Monday, the convention released its attendance numbers for the Best Four Days In Gaming. If you were there at the convention, you knew there were a lot of people there. The place was busy, there were big crowds lining up at the door each day to get in when the exhibitor's hall would open up, and sales are off the charts. Paizo sold through their run of Starfinder on the first day (by 2pm I have heard). Green Ronin sold through their daily allotment of the D&D 5E setting books made in conjunction with Geek And Sundry'sCritical Role channel every day. By Saturday, Modiphius had sold through their copies of ENnies Award winning game Tales From The Loop. Everyone that I spoke with had great sales throughout the weekend, although a few did suffer from being in the hinterlands of a much larger than before exhibition hall.

At Gen Con this year, there is a gaming museum (if you're at the convention, head on over to the Lucas Oil Stadium) set inside a replica of the Horticultural Hall in which the first ever Gen Con took place. Amongst many historic gaming delights, you'll see there a plaque designed by Alex Gygax and Larry Elmore, dedicated to Gary Gygax, who founded Gen Con and co-created Dungeons & Dragons. Photo courtesy of Gail Gygax and the Gygax Memorial Fund.

Day One of Gen Con has come and gone, and honestly it is already nearly a blur. So many people, so many new things, and so many bright shiny things. The reports that I heard was that there are 60-70,000 people in attendance at the con. I took that picture yesterday about an hour before the opening of the exhibition hall.

Lost Tales of Myth Drannor is an official D&D Adventurers League book containing six adventures for characters of levels 1-20. It is billed as a promo for Gen Con's 50th anniversary, although it will eventually appear on the DMs Guild -- from DDAL's Greg Marks: "It is a book that is a promo for GC50 and cons the admins are invited to. It will eventually appear on the DMsGuild."

In advance to their September Kickstarter launch, John Wick Presents will be having a limited number of print copies of their Khitai Quickstart available on their booth at Gen Con (booth 2338). The Quickstart features seven new nations, mechanics overview, new sorceries and an adventure, The Song of the World. The Quickstart will also be made available on DriveThruRPG after Gen Con on preparation for the 7th Sea: The East Kickstarter campaign.

Esper Genesis is a heroic sci-fi RPG for 5E by Alligator Alley Entertainment that was funded on Kickstarter earlier this year. Inspired by Star Wars, Mass Effect, Phastasy Star and Ghost in the Shell players take on the role of a galactic hero where they forge their destiny within a universe of advanced technologies and hidden mysteries. A limited run of the game will be available at Gen Con and Rich Lescouflair of Alligator Alley has shared some of the games artwork with us (below) and also let us know what the company is planning for Gen Con…

Hello everyone, Darryl here with this week’s gaming news! Gen Con sells out, but doesn’t, but kinda does, but you can still get in. ENnie Award voting opens and find out who’ll be telling us the winners! Dice Tower Award winners announced! Star Trek Adventures released in digital format! An update on HyperRPG’s copyright claims and the HUGE legal quagmire it was a part of! And more!

Hello everyone, Darryl here with this week’s gaming news! Did anyone here mention the ENnie Nominations were announced yet? The 2018 Judge Applications are open as well! There’s also news for another Magic: The Gathering/Dungeons & Dragons crossover, Cubicle 7’s loss is Why Not Games’s gain, Dresden Files Accelerated damaged units will be replaced, Emerald City’s volunteer lawsuit settled, and much more!

Hello everyone, this week we have holy crap con season started and ALL the news is happening save me please! GAMA is going on this week and one of the largest gaming trade shows means a lot of big product announcements. Dungeons & Dragons, Pathfinder, Starfinder, Shadowrun, and more announcements. Cool Mini or Not is poising to make a major move on the market. Fall 2016 sales reports are in from ICv2 to let you know the bestselling games on the market today. And more!

Convention season is upon us again. Even as we speak the GAMA Trade Show is going on in Las Vegas as the unofficial start to the year's gaming convention season. Over the next few months we have a number of gaming stretching from the Old School conventions of Gary Con and the North Texas RPG Con, to the larger conventions of Origins and, of course, Gen Con. The next few months are going to be a swirl of activity and work, as companies big and small ready their releases and presentations for the upcoming year.

Darry posted an excellent News Digest Year In Review 2016 the other day, which takes a look at some of the biggest news stories of the year. I thought it would be fun to look at what were the most popular news items here on EN World over the last twelve months. Listed were the 50 most popular tabletop RPG news items on EN World of 2016. It's interesting to see that 27 of them - just over half - were about D&D 5th Edition specifically. The top item was my original scoop about Curse of Strahd, which shows that folks still come to the EN World for the rumours - which is, of course, how the site started.

EN World Reviews

Unlike 4th Edition, 5th Edition D&D has had a much slower pace for book releases. While some fans grumble, the change has worked in WotC's favor, making each release an event, and interest is doubled for source books like Mordenkainen's Tome of Foes.

Here at EN World, I'mlookingatall-agestabletoprole-playinggames, board games, and card games. Do they engage the players at the kids' gaming table? Would they cut it at the adults' table? Are they genuinely fun for every age? A Friend In Need by Jenny Jarzabski from Playground Adventures is a 26-page "stand-alone mini-adventure for […] 1st level characters. Recommended for ages six and up, this module includes adventure content as well as advice for gaming with children." While this review covers the Pathfinder version of the adventure, there is also a 5e version available.

If you want to experience mysteries in Tales from the Loop, Our Friends the Machines is for you. This full color 104 page hardcover includes three complete adventures, eight short adventure locations based on classic 80s songs, four iconic machines from the world of the Loop including blueprints, and a guide to creating your own setting for the game, complete with the Norfolk Broads, a UK-based Loop.

Apocalypse World is the first game to use what we now call the Apocalypse World Engine, published in 2010. It's an innovative system that builds the world as part of character creation, and where the GM (here called the MC) has essentially the same rules as every other player. The second edition of the game was Kickstarted in 2016, and brought the game a bit more in line with the dozens of games that came after.

I reviewed Eloy Lasanta of Third Eye Games'Pip System Corebook on EN World, interviewed him about his AMP Year Four Kickstarter, and talked about my brief run-in with him at AndoCon. Every Third Eye game I've tried has improved my gaming table. With that in mind, when he sent the quickstart for his latest project and Kickstarter, Part-Time Gods 2nd Edition, I knew I wanted to try it out.